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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
ISIS-K spokesman killed in Afghan Special Forces operation in Nangarhar
Today's Headlines
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Page 4: Opinion
3 23:59 Solomon Speaking for Boskone9044 [] 
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1 08:05 Besoeker [] 
3 08:00 Bright Pebbles [] 
3 16:18 Mullah Richard [1] 
8 16:07 M. Murcek [1] 
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Page 2: WoT Background
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Page 6: Politix
10 17:18 Bright Pebbles [2]
13 17:14 Neville Dark Lord of the Wee Folk7365 []
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Britain
Poem of the week: Written at an Inn at Henley by William Shenstone
[Guardian] This cheery tribute to bibulous conviviality also serves up a warm moral.

Written at an Inn at Henley

To thee, fair Freedom! I retire,
From flattery, cards, and dice, and din;
Nor art thou found in mansions higher
Than the low cot, or humble inn.

’Tis here with boundless power I reign,
And every health which I begin,
Converts dull port to bright champagne;
Such Freedom crowns it, at an inn.

I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
I fly from Falsehood’s specious grin;
Freedom I love, and form I hate,
And choose my lodgings, at an inn.

Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
Which lackeys else might hope to win;
It buys what courts have not in store,
It buys me Freedom, at an inn.

Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round,
Where’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome ‐ at an inn.
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 08:16 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  :-) Charming.
Posted by: trailing wife || 11/26/2018 19:01 Comments || Top||

#2  Scrambling out the door, or I might drone on for a quite a while about how much I like this, and why (mostly seems to involve my own weaknesses and limitations, and wanting to work within them, whether reading or writing, for good or ill). In any case... instant favorite here, notwithstanding I scarcely drink, and am more of a hostel person. Thanks.
Posted by: Zenobia Floger6220 || 11/26/2018 23:59 Comments || Top||

#3  Hah. Take that, rollover!
Posted by: Solomon Speaking for Boskone9044 || 11/26/2018 23:59 Comments || Top||


BRIXIT The Movie - The Fish Story
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 07:17 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:


Europe
Germany's new Green divide - Has the German left found its answer to right-wing nationalism?
[Politico] Historians trying to trace the collapse of Germany’s Social Democrats would do well to look at the neighborhood of Haidhausen in central Munich.

For centuries, the area was known as the "poorhouse" of the Bavarian capital; after post-war reconstruction, it became a dilapidated workers’ quarter, described as a "district of broken glass" for its rundown condition. "About half of all apartments had no bathroom and no hot water," the magazine Der Spiegel wrote in 1980. Even fewer had access to central heating.

Over the past few decades, however, the neighborhood has flourished ‐ thanks in no small part to a large-scale redevelopment plan initiated by the SPD-led city government in the early 1970s. Gentrification has taken hold. Residents are younger and rents are higher than the Munich average. Trendy cafes, expensive bicycles and organic shops cluster around the district’s picturesque squares.

Given Haidhausen’s history, it’s no surprise that the Social Democrats were the dominant party in this area for decades ‐ at least until recently. In Bavaria’s state election in October, the SPD suffered a colossal defeat in the Munich-Mitte constituency to which Haidhausen belongs, its vote share shrinking by two-thirds. Instead, the constituency’s residents flocked to the Greens, handing the former protest party a near-majority with 42.5 percent of the votes.

In an election that saw the SPD fall below 10 percent in Bavaria for the first time since 1893, Haidhausen’s shift of allegiance is the latest example of what analysts say is a broad realignment of the political landscape in Germany and in Europe.
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 06:21 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Anxiously awaiting EC's comments.
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 6:23 Comments || Top||

#2  Why? It'll just be a lecture to us ignorant Americans.
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 11/26/2018 7:30 Comments || Top||

#3  Far left melons (green veneer on red) AKA Oikohphobic socialists are the natural evolution of the national socialists and will probably get even more people killed.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 11/26/2018 8:00 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Joe Dan Gorman at Intellectual Froglegs - Video
[Intellectual Froglegs] Joe Dan Gorman was born in Dallas, Texas, and raised in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, both of which contribute to his southern sense of independence and humor.

Gorman prospered as a real estate broker, investor, and private consultant, serving as vice president of the one-time largest real estate investment entity in Southern Arizona.

And then the unthinkable happened: the booming real estate market collapsed in 2007, leaving Joe Dan’s holdings in tatters.

Concurrently, Gorman was fighting a multi-year battle for custody of his son.

Within three months Joe Dan’s business was shuttered, his son was taken from him, and his father died.

Joe Dan learned first hand something akin to the lessons of Job: he went from material success and a beautiful home, to living in his Aunt Jean’s basement. He searched for work everywhere to no avail, not even burger joints were hiring.

Somehow Gorman summoned his Lone Star State grit and reinvented himself and did something completely out of the box: he created a video on his laptop.

That video entitled “I Will Follow Him,” depicting the media and Hollywood adoration of newly elected Barack Hussein Obama, went viral and set the foundation for a future in political humor via videos:
Web Site
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 06:36 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  More at VIMEO
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 8:05 Comments || Top||


Evil Trump Stops Immigrant Children From Visiting White House
[Victory Girls] At least that’s what the frothing-at-the-mouth news media and outraged parents would have you believe. "White House Turns Away Foreign Students on Tour With Class," screamed headlines in the New York Post, with the story picked up verbatim by the Daily Mail Fail, and others. I realize that expecting the news media to be objective when it comes to this President is like expecting a freebie from a hooker, but really? This?

What transpired on November 15th was a massive FAIL on the part of the school administrators and parents ‐ not EEEEEEVIL Trump or the EEEEEEvil Trump Secret Service.
A group of seventh-graders from Henry Hudson Regional School in Highlands braved a snowstorm on Nov. 15 for a long-awaited bus trip to Washington DC.

The bad weather and treacherous road conditions added hours to the drive and left no time for anything but their visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Even lunch on the White House lawn was canceled.

But the snafus didn’t stop there. Months in advance, the school had to send the White House visitors office a list of all students and adults expected to take the tour.

After making it through an initial checkpoint, Secret Service agents stopped three Henry Hudson students who didn’t have their passports or other identification required for non-US citizens.

Note the following in this report:

‐ Students "braved" a snowstorm (in a bus ‐ probably a heated one). They did so in treacherous conditions ‐ oh such heroes (as a parent, I would have questioned the wisdom of not rescheduling the trip, given the road hazards, but OK ‐ beside the point).

‐ It was a "long-awaited" trip to Washington DC, because we must whip up sympathy for these kids.

‐ A longtime security policy at the White House is now portrayed as a "snafu" without explaining whose screw-up it really was.

‐ Secret Service officers are portrayed as anti-immigrant for doing their job.

Guess what, critters! That’s not how any of this works, and no matter how hard you try to paint Trump, his Administration, and the officers who are tasked with protecting the President and his family, as evil anti-immigrant ogres, the facts don’t support your bias.
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 03:24 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If the bus had wrecked on the way to or back from DC it would have been Trump's fault...
Posted by: M. Murcek || 11/26/2018 13:06 Comments || Top||

#2  The snow and the non-functioning traffic light on DuPont Circle are Trump's fault.
Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom || 11/26/2018 15:24 Comments || Top||

#3  The traffic signal not working is maybe due to some DuPont Circle characters jury-rigging USB chargers into the system instead of going 100% solar or something.

Years ago while visiting, used to play a game with the kids for guessing genders there. Extra points were given for 'I don't know'.

Now of course for many, that's the 'correct' response.
Posted by: Mullah Richard || 11/26/2018 16:18 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Forget Khashoggi, Where Were Our Elites When Obama Assassinated American Citizens?
[Townhall] In the wake of Trump’s announcement this week that his administration would continue to "stand with Saudi Arabia" despite the recent murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, America’s mainstream media elites erupted in their usual paroxysms of despair and condemnation of the president. Although this time the typical "orange man bad" stories tended to omit calls for Trump to be immediately overthrown by the military or his own cabinet, almost every other major trope was preponderant.

This was especially true of Khashoggi’s former place of employment at the Post, where journalists almost universally portrayed Trump as having blood on his hands for his refusal to directly take action against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, now widely believed to have ordered Khashoggi’s murder.

Among the most vituperative critics of Trump in this regard was Post global opinions editor Karen Attiah, Khashoggi’s editor and self-described friend. In a column published on Tuesday entitled "Trump’s Defense of Khashoggi’s Saudi Murderers Will Stain Him (and America) Forever," Attiah told her readers that [emphasis mine]:
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
Karen Attiah
Washington, D.C.
Global Opinions editor, writing on international affairs and social issues
Education: Northwestern University, BA in communication studies, minor in African Studies; Columbia University, master's in international affairs
Karen Attiah is the Global Opinions editor at The Washington Post, where she commissions and edits commentary on global issues from a variety of international writers. She joined The Post in 2014 as a digital producer in the Opinions section. Attiah often writes on issues relating to race, gender and international politics, with a special interest in Africa. Previously, she reported as a freelancer for the Associated Press while based in the Caribbean. Attiah was a Fulbright scholar to Ghana and holds a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University. She received her bachelor's degree in communication studies from Northwestern University.
Honors & Awards:
Fulbright fellow, 2008
Foreign languages spoken: Spanish

Posted by: 3dc || 11/26/2018 0:38 Comments || Top||

#2  I find myself unable to muster up any sympathy whatsoever for ay Americans killed as an act of war commanded, as is his Constitutional responsibility, by the president of the United States after the future deader joined a jihadi organization. I do not care whether he is an accidental American like Anwar al-Awlaki, a naturalized immigrant like Samir Khan, or a multigeneration American who converted to Islam, then ran off to be a jihadi tourist. As far as I’m concerned, once someone has has gone abroad to join a jihadi organization he (or, too often, she) has thrown away the privileges of treatment as an American citizen instead of as a spy. And spies, according to the Geneva Conventions, can be shot in sight.
Posted by: trailing wife || 11/26/2018 0:43 Comments || Top||

#3  I'm almost afraid to ask, but what exactly does a Global Opinions editor do? (as someone said, if you can't explain what you do in a single declarative sentence, it's not a real job)

As for Kashoggi getting whacked, never have I heard of such a harsh and brutal injustice that I cared so little about. Not since the last time, anyway.
Posted by: SteveS || 11/26/2018 1:05 Comments || Top||

#4  Khashoggi was just as bad as they were. A friend and supporter of Osama ben Laden, a propagandist for the Moslem Brotherhood and Hamas, an enemy of the United States and Saudi Arabia, the Saudi's had every right to whack him, if we had the right to whack the gentlemen you mention.
Only haters of the USA would like us to go after the most promising Saudi reformer to ever come along, so far.
Or does our treatment of Awlaki et al mean our former President should be banished from dealings with the rest of the human race.
Posted by: Daniel || 11/26/2018 2:05 Comments || Top||

#5  Khashoggi’s editor and self-described friend

I'm sure Khashoggi wouldn't describe somebody black AND female this way.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/26/2018 3:49 Comments || Top||

#6  Projecting their fears.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 11/26/2018 7:47 Comments || Top||

#7  It would have been OK if Obumble had done it.
Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom || 11/26/2018 15:25 Comments || Top||

#8  Brown on brown seems to be no harm no foul in the leftist version of America and the world...
Posted by: M. Murcek || 11/26/2018 16:07 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
The Anti-American Americans
[PJ] So here we are, at Thanksgiving, surrounded by a crowd of arrogant, ignorant, self-proclaimed superior people who proclaim, as was once declared about Vietnam, that the only way to save the country is to destroy it. That the European welfare state is the proper model for us, and that our electoral choices are mostly wrong. And evil. The first anti-American president put it bluntly in an interview with with one of his cronies, saying Americans are "confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, mommy issues."

In Obama’s view, we’re unworthy of him and his ruling class. All 57 states’ worth, I suppose. If we dare vote for candidates they don’t like, they feel entitled to change the results. And it isn’t just the usual suspects in the media and the schools; it includes the sorry case of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Mr. Roberts, who now suggests that judges are fully empowered to undo the clearly expressed preferences of the American people, and that somehow criticism of them, not their outrageous rulings, was the inappropriate act. It was deliciously satisfying to see him slapped down by Senator Grassley, an Iowa farmer who understands better than most how politicized the judiciary has become. He knows how often our judges have somehow come to believe that we have a lot to learn from foreign laws and judges, an amazing development that would have us turn the obvious lessons of the past 250 years upside-down. Just check out where our judges go during summer vacation, and what they do, and you’ll see it.

From Obama to Roberts, our self-proclaimed ruling class have missed the import of the global revolution ushered in by the American Revolution. Indeed, they seem to think that we never should have broken with Britain, so that the confused, blind, hate-filled, angry racists (I don’t quite understand what "mommy issues" refers to) would never have wrecked the world. They do not tell us if we would speak German or Japanese, or maybe Russian.
Sadly, more at the link.
Posted by: Besoeker || 11/26/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  the link
Posted by: Harry Spoth3426 || 11/26/2018 1:19 Comments || Top||

#2  I blame affirmative action.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/26/2018 3:52 Comments || Top||

#3  Oikophobia, a hate of the people in their own countries, unites the globalist vermin.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 11/26/2018 4:29 Comments || Top||

#4  Globalism + collectivism = neofeudalism.

The push for neofeudalism contains two powerful groups - globalists (small in number but control vast amounts of capital) and the public sector clerisy (large in number and have access to vast amounts of state power).

Two threads came out of the end of the Enlightenment/Westphalia century. The founding of the U.S. and the French Revolution. One sought a truly new way and was the delivery of the promise of the Enlightenment and Westphalian nationalism, tempered by Christian principles.

The other was an attempt to hijack concentration of state power and rising scientific knowledge to attempt return to the pharaonic model of a society and world domination if possible - only with a slightly different group of thugs at the top.

The mandarins in Brussels and their Blue State model counterparts here in the U.S. are all people who would have sided with King George III in the 1770s. There is a lot of desire in people who style themselves a ruling class to be, well, rulers. There is a lot of desire by people who join an economically protected public clerisy for a system which will give them what they, as twisted, damaged adolescents and sociopaths desire most - perfect economic security at any cost to their neighbors and nation.

The Democrats and GOPe tap into both of those dynamics.
Posted by: no mo uro || 11/26/2018 7:20 Comments || Top||

#5  Which is why it's so important to fight rent-seeking wherever it occurs.

The more you allow rent-seeking, the more it expands, of course rent-seeking destroys that which sustains it, which means it is either a temporary affair (AKA marxist societies) or done stealthily (billionaire progressivists picked by "security" services).
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 11/26/2018 8:04 Comments || Top||

#6  We've had anti-american Americans since the Cold War. Probably earlier but they became obvious during the cold war. I sort of understand those paid by the communists but will never get the useful idiots who just believe whatever nonsense they are told.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 11/26/2018 10:32 Comments || Top||

#7  I'm beginning to think that Roberts is a "sleeper cell" for the left.
Posted by: warthogswife || 11/26/2018 11:55 Comments || Top||

#8  but will never get the useful idiots who just believe whatever nonsense they are told

See The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. It explains how:

Feminists have no problems with muzlim depradations against women.

Gerbil worming crusaders loves them some private jet.

The people who most want you poor and oppressed sure don't want to join you in that.

It isn't about the common good at all.

It's about believing...
Posted by: M. Murcek || 11/26/2018 14:08 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
25[untagged]
2Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan
2Govt of Iraq
2Hamas
2Sublime Porte
2Taliban
1Govt of Pakistan
1Govt of Syria
1al-Nusra
1Houthis
1Islamic State
1Lashkar e-Taiba
1al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
1al-Shabaab (AQ)
1Fatah
1Muslim Brotherhood

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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
Click here for more information

Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
3dc
Skidmark

Two weeks of WOT
Mon 2018-11-26
  ISIS-K spokesman killed in Afghan Special Forces operation in Nangarhar
Sun 2018-11-25
  Federal officials close border into Mexico amid migrant protests
Sat 2018-11-24
  U.S. Airstrikes Kill 50 Al-Shabaab Jihadis in Somalia
Fri 2018-11-23
  Terror attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi foiled; 2 policemen martyred
Thu 2018-11-22
  PA court sentences Palestinians to 15 years hard labor for selling land to Jews
Wed 2018-11-21
  US military says strikes killed over 30 suspected militants in Somalia
Tue 2018-11-20
  Daesh suffers devastating defeat as Syrian Army liberates entire Al-Safa region
Mon 2018-11-19
  Key Taliban commanders among 7 detained by Afghan Commandos in Takhar
Sun 2018-11-18
  43 civilians killed by anti-ISIS coalition strikes in east Syria
Sat 2018-11-17
  Taliban kill 30 policemen in Farah province
Fri 2018-11-16
  Saudi Arabia will BEHEAD Khashoggi killers
Thu 2018-11-15
  Maute brothers' teen cousin surrenders in Mindanao
Wed 2018-11-14
  Ceasefire Goes Into Effect In South Following Unprecedented Rocket Barrage
Tue 2018-11-13
  Gaza factions agree to cease fire if Israel halts attack - Palestinian official
Mon 2018-11-12
  IAF have begun air strikes on Gaza.

Better than the average link...



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